Officer Clay Burch is one part of the three-pronged approach that makes up Measure Y, in which community police are complemented by street outreach teams. PSOs and outreach teams link young people to the actual programs that help create foundations for a better life. And for Burch, improving Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods happens one building, and one person, at a time.

The student paper headline read, "Debate Already Closed." But elsewhere on the San Francisco State University campus, the debate was just beginning, about a proposed $93 million recreation center whose bottom line seems to loom over the conversation about deep curriculum cutbacks this fall.

Students gathered Thursday in the Cesar Chavez student center for a teach-in organized by the Coalition Against the Rec Center, a group of students opposing the construction of a Recreation and Wellness Center. But the proposal has divided opinion on campus, with the president of the largest student group, which strongly backs the plan, declaring, "The project will never die."

Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, said he does not believe his Web site is to blame for crimes committed by those who use the Internet to lure their victims.

“People might use our site, much like they might use the phone, or a car, or the roads, and I can’t find a reason for any of us to feel guilty about it,” Newmark said during a wide-ranging interview with the Public Press’ Stephen Robert Morse.

Warfield Building owner David Addington said he spent several years, working to bring general advertising back on Market Street from Fifth to Seventh streets, in hopes of returning the central city stretch to its former glory days as a theater district.

Although his enthusiasm for the special district hasn’t dimmed, a sense of reality has crept in as opposition to the initiative, Proposition D, mounts.

For many, the police are here to serve and protect. The men and women in blue are those we call when we’re in trouble. And no part of Oakland is more in need of policing than the streets between the East 70s avenues and the East 100s avenues — stretching from the base of the hills to the bottom of the flatlands — or what residents call the “Deep East.” It is where over one-third of the city’s 124 homicides occurred last year. But many of the youths living on these dangerous streets don’t welcome the police as protectors — they consider them the enemy.

The city has sent layoff notices to 546 health and clerical workers, but that doesn't mean the public payroll will shrink by 546 jobs come mid-November. City officials are still deciding how many workers will be reclassified and then rehired at lower pay. The SEIU claims Mayor Gavin Newsom has reneged on a deal to save all the jobs.

To help employees suffering "additional financial stress" from pay cuts and furloughs, the University of California-San Francisco is letting workers borrow their lost wages and repay the money -- with interest.

But employees hoping to tap a UCSF emergency loan fund for help paying rent or bills are out of luck. These don't count as "an unplanned emergency situation."

San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Francisco financier Warren Hellman – in partnership with KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and perhaps even the New York Times – is about to launch a nonprofit, locally focused, online news organization with a medium-sized newsroom of full-time journalists, Hellman has confirmed to the Guardian.

San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos is crafting a proposal that would place a fee on alcohol sold in the city, potentially raising $25 million to $35 million annually to help pay for alcohol-related public health and criminal justice costs.

As the city shrinks its payroll, sending layoff notices to certified nursing assistants and clerical staff, it is touching off accusations from organized labor that officials are discriminating against women and minority workers.

Already reeling from a deep recession and massive cuts to staff and services in this year’s budget, San Francisco is being hammered by a new tidal wave of state cuts -- estimated at $26.5 million -- which could put low-income seniors and others on the brink of homelessness and hunger, many advocates say.

Although San Francisco’s city budget was passed in July, District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar says he believes taking a more fundamental process to passing it is in order.

He advocates having "a people's budget," in which the process would solicit more grassroots involvement at "the early levels as opposed to where you have people rallying and begging at the last minute ... when they can't have as much of an impact on the budget."

Hundreds of Bay Area residents -- from youngsters to seniors -- gathered at San Francisco's City Hall Wednesday to begin the final push for a campaign for national health care reform.

The crowd included physicians, as well as members of labor, Organizing for America, MoveOn, Code Pink, ACORN, Health Care for America Now and residents including former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the current chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.

S. Clay Wilson, a longtime fixture on the San Francisco underground comix scene who sustained a traumatic head injury last year, was honored at the close of “The Cresting Wave: The San Francisco Underground Comix Experience” exhibition in San Francisco Sunday evening.

The Public Press and KALW (91.7 FM) teamed up for a budget roundtable that aired Aug. 17 on the “Crosscurrents” news program. A panel of local experts offered a lively and informative on-the-air discussion about San Francisco’s budget crisis and its impacts on residents and communities.

As the U.S. Census Bureau gears up for the 2010 count, it has made a significant change in how it engages immigrants -- this is causing some city officials concern that San Francisco may lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, which in turn may lead to distorted electoral representation.

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